1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus having a check printing function.
2. Description of Related Art
In an image forming apparatus having a check printing function, whether an image is formed in a desired finishing style can be checked before actually printing the image. In the conventional image forming apparatus, the image forming processing for check print is executed with respect to one copy of a document. Therefore, if one copy of a document has a large number of pages, the image forming processing is executed with respect to a large number of sheets regardless of user's wishes, which causes unnecessary operations if a user does not want to check all the pages.
Therefore, there is known an image forming apparatus in which a user indicates the number of sheets to be printed in advance before check print is executed and then the check print is executed on only the indicated number of sheets (see JP-A-2003-266899, for example).
Furthermore, there is also known an image forming apparatus provided with a double-side mode, a staple mode, a reduced-layout mode in addition to a manual setting mode of indicating the number of sheets for check print by a user. In this image forming apparatus, the number of sheets for check print is automatically calculated in accordance with each of the double-side printing mode, the staple mode and the reduced-layout mode, and the check print is executed on only the calculated number of sheets (see JP-A-2004-32704, for example).
However, with respect to JP-A-2003-266899, a user must set the number of sheets to be printed for check print. With respect to JP-A-2004-32704, a user is required to set the number of sheets to be printed in each of the double-side mode, the staple mode and the reduced-layout mode by himself or herself, which is cumbersome for the user.
In conventional image forming apparatuses containing the apparatuses disclosed in JP-A-2003-266899 and JP-A-2004-32704, it is merely possible to specify the number of sheets for check print, and it is impossible to specify the pages to be targeted for check print in accordance with the purpose of the check print.
As described above, with respect to the conventional image forming apparatuses, the operation load imposed on users is great, and also it is impossible to specify the pages for check print in accordance with the purpose, so that these image forming apparatuses are inconvenient to use for users.